Sunday Classics: Colin Davis's surprising triumph in Mahler's "Song of the Earth"

The firmament is eternally blue, and the earth
will long stand fast and blossom in spring.
But thou, O man, how long then livest thou?
Not a hundred years canst thou delight
in all the rotten trash of this earth!

-- from "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde" ("The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow"), the opening movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth); English translation by Deryck Cooke

Jon Vickers, tenor; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded March 1981

by Ken

In Friday night's preview I argued that Jon Vickers's massive but "slow-speaking" tenor was heard to limited advantage in "On Youth," the finely detailed second of the three tenor songs of Mahler's song-symphony The Song of the Earth. I certainly wouldn't say the same of at least this fraught chunk of the opening song. This seems to me very much the kind of sound -- that of a full-fledged heroic tenor -- that Mahler must have had in mind.

We're going to hear the full song momentarily, but first I think we need to repeat an experiment we've done before in approaching Mahler's Song of the Earth(1908-09), his six-movement setting of Hans Bethge's then-recently-published German renderings of classical Chinese poems, which was the first work he conceived after learning that he had untreatable heart disease. We're going to listen again to his final, confidently heaven-storming musical utterance before the fateful diagnosis. (It's the conclusion of Goethe's Faust.)

MAHLER: Symphony No. 8 in E-flat (1906):
conclusion, "Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis"

All things transitory are but parable;
here insufficiency becomes fulfillment,
here the indescribable is accomplished;
the ever-womanly draws us heavenward.
[much repeated]

-- English translation by Peggie Cochrane

Soloists, choruses, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. BMG, recorded live, July 7-8, 1996

Soloists, choruses, London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. BBC Legends, live performance from the Royal Albert Hall, March 20, 1959

SUNDAY CLASSICS AND DAS LIED VON DER ERDE

i. "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde"
("The Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth")
"In the opening vision of Mahler's Song of the Earth: 'Dark is life, is death' " [8/22/2010]
iii. "Von der Jugend" ("On Youth")
"Preview: Mahler's view of idyllic youths turns them upside down" [8/21/2010]
v. "Der Trunkene im Frühling" ("The Drunk in Spring")
"Preview: In Mahler's Song of the Earth, we meet a springtime drunk" [8/20/2010]
vi. "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell")
in "Remembering Maureen Forrester, Part 2: Mahler" [7/11/2010]
in "A farewell to Fischer-Dieskau" [5/27/2012]

IN DAS LIED, SOMETHING CAME OVER COLIN DAVIS

It seems to me that there have been a couple of other relevant posts I'm not recalling, but the above-listed are the important ones. Yes, as far as I can recall we've never done the first two alto (or baritone) songs, "The Lonely One in Fall" and "On Beauty." One of these days they should make a nice work unit.

For now, as I mentioned Friday we're going to be listening to the first and last movements of Das Lied, which are so important to me that we actually broke both down into component parts.

Friday night I wrote:

In this series devoted to Colin Davis, my general proposition has been that most really good CD performances seem to result from our boy "just doing it" -- hearing basic qualities in music and executing them decisively. This doesn't leave a lot of room for imagination or "creative re-creation," or what in general I would think of as really enlightened or illuminating interpretation.

And then there was his recording of Mahler's Das Lied von Der Erde (The Song of the Earth), the song-symphony composed based on Hans Bethge's German translations of Chinese poems composed between the Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. Crucially, it was conceived and composed following the diagnosis of the composer's untreatable heart disease. It would be hard to think of a work that depends more on deep understanding, of empathetic projection of its tiniest musical cells. Not, in other words, material in which we would expect to hear CD at his most persuasive.

And certainly CD's other Mahler recordings -- of the First, Fourth, and Eighth Symphonies, that I know -- are the generally drab affairs one might expect. But the recording of Das Lied . . . .

Now, as it happens, we've heard the peroration of Sir Colin's Eighth, and while it does achieve a climax of sorts, it seems to me mostly just by getting louder, which is why I've also thrown in our go-to Horenstein performance, despite its limited 1959 broadcast sonics. (For the record, we've never "done" the whole of the Eighth, but we did do the much smaller of its two parts, Part I, Mahler's setting of the medieval hymn "Veni, Creator Spiritus," in September 2012.)

Das Lied is a work that resides squarely in the imagination, requiring both fastidious and sympathetic attention to the tiniest musical details and an appreciation of each movement's particular mode of forward movement. I often said that Colin Davis's great performances often came in the most unexpected repertory, and I wonder if anyone was surprised as I was when he delivered what became for me one of the three essential recordings of Das Lied, along with Bruno Walter's 1960 and Otto Klemperer's 1965-66 ones. (There are two other recordings I'd be hard put to live without: Fritz Reiner's 1959 RCA one with Maureen Forrester and Richard Lewis, and Leonard Bernstein's 1972 CBS one with Christa Ludwig and René Kollo. But in a pinch I could make do with just the three.)

As I suggested Friday, I still have reservations about the seemingly limited collaboration between Sir Colin and his two excellently cast soloists, Jon Vickers and Jessye Norman. But they both do a fair amount of gorgeous work, and Sir Colin's relish of the work's tiny motivic cells combines with a feel for its symphonic momentum that make this, for me, a performance to treasure.

And you know what? I'm not going to say anything more. We're just going to listen to each soloist's most important song. (For more extended consideration, I encourage listeners to refer to the earlier posts listed above.) I couldn't resist including a selection of other performances, not to lessen my admiration for Sir Colin's, but to suggest how wide a range of reimaginings this amazing music encourages, and perhaps to help locate the particular triumphs achieved in the Davis recording.

MAHLER: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):

i. "Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde"
("The Drinking Song of Earth's Sorrow")

[English translations by Deryck Cooke]

Now beckons the wine in the golden goblet,
but drink not yet, first I'll sing you a song!
The song of sorrow
shall in gusts of laughter through your souls resound.
When sorrow draws near,
wasted lie the gardens of the soul.
Withered and dying are joy and song.
Dark is life, is death.

Master of this house!
Your cellar holds its fill of golden wine!
Here, this lute I name my own!
To strike the lute and to drain the glasses,
these are the things that go together.
A full goblet of wine at the right time
is worth more than all the kingdoms of this earth!
Dark is life, is death.

The firmament is blue eternally, and the earth
will long stand fast and blossom in spring.
But thou, O man, how long then livest thou?
Not a hundred years canst thou delight
in all the rotten trash of this earth!

Look there, down there! In the moonlight, on the graves
squats a mad spectral figure!
It is an ape! Hear how his howling
screams its way through the sweet fragrance of life!

Now take the wine! Now it is time, companions!
Drain your golden goblets to the dregs!
Dark is life, is death!

Jon Vickers, tenor; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded March 1981

Ernst Häfliger, tenor; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded April 1960

Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Philharmonia/New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded 1965-66

Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth):
vi. "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell")

The sun is going down behind the mountains.
In every valley evening is descending,
bringing its shadows, which are full of coolness.
O look! where like a silver bark afloat,
the moon through the blue lake of heaven soars upwards.
I sense the shivering of a delicate breeze
behind the dark fir trees.

The brook sings, full of melody, through the darkness.
The flowers grow pale in the twilight.
The earth is breathing, full of rest and sleep;
all desire now turns to dreaming.
Weary mortals wend homewards,
so that, in sleep, forgotten joy
and youth they may learn anew.
The birds huddle silent on the branches.
The world is falling asleep!

It blows cool in the shadow of my fir trees.
I stand here and wait for my friend.
I wait for him, to take the last farewell.
I long, O my friend, to be by your side,
to enjoy the beauty of this evening.
Where are you lingering? You leave me long alone!
I wander to and fro with my lute
on pathways that billow with soft grass.
O beauty! O eternal life- and love-intoxicated world!

Orchestral interlude

He alighted from his horse and handed him the drink
of farewell.
He asked him whither he was going,
and also why, why it had to be.
He spoke; his voice was veiled:
"You, my friend --
In this world fortune was not kind to me!
Whither I go? I go, I wander in the mountains,
I seek rest for my lonely heart!
I journey to the homeland, to my resting place;
I shall never again go seeking the far distance.
My heart is still and awaits its hour!

The dear earth everywhere
blossoms in spring and grows green again!
Everywhere and eternally the distance shines bright and blue!
Eternally . . . eternally . . .

Jessye Norman, soprano; London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded March 1981

Mildred Miller, mezzo-soprano; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded April 1960

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia/New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded 1965-66

Maureen Forrester, contralto; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA-BMG, recorded Nov. 7 and 9, 1959

FINALLY, TO HEAR MAHLER'S BARITONE OPTION . . .

Here's the first of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's two recordings. (We heard both in the "Farewell to Fischer-Dieskau" post, as well as one conducted by him.)


Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Kletzki, cond. EMI, recorded October 1959

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